Yeah, so I’m a #3. You have a problem with that? 
I will when they inexplicably make you the director. It’s okay, though, because they won’t let you in the children’s room.
I work as a librarian for a tv station and catalogue both raw tape and produced items. It’s like watching tv and descibing what goes on each time the camera moves to a new shot. Then I upload that to one of our databases, which I access to find shots our reporters or producers need. I just got a call for cruise ships stocks at a couple of specifc ports. My boss also has to deal a lot with evolving technology and migrating items to new formats or, at the very least, dealing with degrading film and video tape.
No, I got that, but being a librarian with a sense of humor I thought I’d pretend to take you literally (actually it was more of a test for myself to see if I could come up with 24).
I’m none of these:
I’m more like:
6. Internet savvy middle aged librarian who understands what the kids are doing these days, but doesn’t quite get “why”.
and
7. A font of completely useless trivia I’ll be glad to share with you if you give me an opening.
We sit around and read books all day, right? 
Seriously though, as you can probably tell, we do lots of things. I work in a small college library and wear many hats. I am the science librarian and outreach and marketing coordinator. The main bits of my job are ordering books and maintaining the collection, staffing the reference desk, teaching classes on how to use the library and promoting the library on campus. I do everything from unjamming printers, to ordering a few hundred books a year, to helping redesign the library web site. On my upcoming sabbatical, I will be studying website usability.
The best thing is that there are so many different aspects to the job that it doesn’t ever get boring. That and undergrads are lot of fun to work with. I highly recommend it as a career.
- Hot young intern who’s probably going to make a break into the modeling world once the summer’s over.
- High-school volunteer bored with shelving books.
- IT type pissed at having to reboot the ancient Windows-98-based internet terminal for the nth time this afternoon.
This is what I meant to write.
You should start an “Ask the librarian” thread. Hopefully there are other librarians that could also add in.
By the way, did anyone here see or apply for this: Archivist for the Grateful Dead Archive?
It came out a year or so ago, so I have no idea if it’s still open. I nearly peed myself when I first saw it. Man, what a job. (Er, not that being a children’s librarian with a puppet fixation isn’t great…)
Sorry I’m late to the thread.
Even sorrier I have virtually nothing to add at this point.
shhhh…
My whole day is Ask the Librarian. Starting with “do you work here?” and going through “The copier won’t copy” through “Can I cut this out of this newspaper?” and to “Would you like to hear about my ancestors?”
I vaguely know a woman who got a job as the Disney animation studio librarian. They have a huge collection of children’s book and wanted all of them recatalogued according to style of illustration!
My absolutely favorite question of all time. One of these days, I’m going to actually say the answer that goes through my mind every time I get asked that while working the Information Desk: “No, I just got here early and got the really big desk.”
Library sounds really cool in Spanish. Biblioteca. Donde esta la biblioteca?
They just want to know where they can get a really cool necklace with an ugly picture of themselves on it.
Yes, it’s a pity it didn’t catch on in English; perhaps if U2 had done a song…
[Bono] Biblio- (biblio-) bibliothèque!
Oh, we have a #5 - a heifer we call Nose Ring who stares right through you, as if you are speaking Tamil, when you interrupt her musings to ask a Stupid Question, forcing you to repeat yourself twice. She’s a bit jollier now that she lost several dozen pounds.
It must be tiresome, accosted by the foul smelling public all the time…My aunt was a librarian eons ago, pre-computer, in a small village library, and got me a summer job there. But it’s all different now. Though today I’d take a volunteer position shelving books just to be in an air conditioned building.
And in French, bibliothèque is ‘library’; librarie is ‘bookstore’!
I always thought a librarian would be a groovy job for a pothead.
You work in a clean place.
It’s quiet.
There are bums who sleep in there, but there are normal people there too.
Plenty of books to borrow and read. Take that Barnes and Noble!
You’re job does not require making that much money, a librarian does not have to sell shit or offer a service.
Since the library has no money, you would not get robbed.
You put books away.
You get books for people.
You get to tell kids to STFU.